~ politics for the people

Lord Tebbit, repeating a lie about food banks does not make it true

Tebbit’s life: He used to be Margaret Thatcher’s ‘boot boy’ – now he is mostly used to scare birds away from his garden and to dribble nonsense at the Daily Mail.

Former Tory enforcer and walking cadaver Lord Tebbit seems intent on spending his twilight years making a fool of himself.

His latest effort appeared yesterday in the Daily Mail , when he parroted a comment about food banks that Lord Fraud – sorry, Freud – made last year. The claim was disproved almost instantly but, thanks to the power of Tory stupidity, here it is again:

“There is always a near infinite demand for valuable goods that are given away free,” said Tebbit, who nowadays looks like he needs a food bank himself, before going on to claim that they use the service to save cash – and then spend it on junk food.

Compare that with what Freud said last year: “If you put more food banks in, that is the supply. Clearly, food from the food banks is a free good and by definition with a free good there’s almost infinite demand.”

Fair point? No.

A report commissioned by Defra – the government’s own Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, made it clear that it could find “no systematic evidence on the impact of increased supply and [that] hypotheses of its potential effects are not based on robust evidence.”

Both Tebbit and Freud have been talking tripe.

People attending food banks don’t have any spare money at all!

They are referred by organisations that are expert in recognising true, desperate poverty – and also by Jobcentre Plus advisors (perhaps that’s where Lord Tebbit’s problem lies) – on the expectation that they will receive the help they need to get back on their feet in short order. That’s why the number of visits they are allowed to make are limited. Perhaps Lord Tebbit hadn’t been briefed on that?

All we’re seeing is another example of the Tory belief that, if a lie doesn’t work the first time it is aired, wait a year or so and then try it again. They did it with the benefit cap and they have almost certainly done it with other policies.

Reblogged this on Beastrabban’s Weblog and commented:
Reading this piece about Tebbit in the Daily Mail repeating the lie that people only use food banks, not because they’re starving, but because they’re free, reminded me of Goebbel’s statement about repeating a lie so often that it becomes the truth. And the Daily Mail should know a thing or two about Fascist propaganda. Under Lord Rothermere the Daily Mail published pieces praising Hitler and promoting Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists. And who advised Lord Rothermere to do that? Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. See Richard Thurlow, Fascism in Britain 1918-1986 for details.

From the Mail’s point of view, it’s important to repeat this lie in order to maintain the case for the further dismantling of the welfare state. If they are forced to admit that people use food banks, because they really are starving, then public opinion, even amongst the ignorant and bigoted readers of the Daily Mail, might just start to turn against them, and against the parties that support cutting the welfare state back further. And as this would not be ‘business-friendly’ in the eyes of the Mail and its Tory paymasters, nor the parts of its readership who share Thatcher’s opinion of the working class as idle, workshy and treacherous, this has to be avoided at all costs.

I would love to see all these so called “politicians” and ex politicians prove what they say. Until the likes of the ones crawling out of the woodwork and the likes of IDS, Fraud, Cameron and Osbourne can actually PROVE what they say, without referring to fiddled figures, then I won’t listen or believe a word they say!
Anyway, by the looks of Tebbit he’ll be joining the witch soon!

Food Banks are not enough. If you are hungry one day, you are hungry every day. There is enough food going to waste sent to landfill in the UK to do what the world does – have daily soup kitchens giving cooked hot meals and hot drinks, each and every day. And the kitchens manned by council workers, who keep working to feed the cashless even during an anti-austerity strike. As Gandhi observed, People’s Politics Are Their Daily Bread. End bin-dipping for food by the homeless, starving by parents and children of the working poor and poor pensioners today. How to feed all, each and every day and leave none to starve ever again.http://theswansnewparty.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/the-world-knows-we-starve-in-uk-abroad.html